Often, we ask God for something. And often, we wait for some time before we get it. How do we become more patient towards God especially when we ask Him for something and He doesn’t seem to hear?
This entry has been inspired by past events in my life wherein I prayed and asked God and He answered me with a resounding ‘YES’ and then He told me to wait. I thought I heard His ‘yes’ wrong, hence my series of ‘relationship’ entries such as:
- What I think about girls who have had past relationships
- How to Surrender a Relationship
- 3 Steps on how to move on from a Relationship
- Why you easily fall in love after a breakup
- Five Things I tell singles who asks “Am I ready for a relationship?”
- 11 Wrong concepts of Love
- Why Loving someone too much can be Dangerous
- How to Overcome Insecurity when Courting or being Courted
- 5 Things to keep in mind on how to Love a person of the Opposite Sex
But now I’m so graciously blessed with that which I prayed for. I want you to have the same patience especially when you hear a ‘YES’ from God.
God is the great Giver
Everything comes from God. He is the Maker. Creator. All things come from Him and are created for Him – for His glory and purpose. Everything we have, everything we own comes from God.
“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” - Colossians 1:16
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” – John 1:3
The three Answers
When we pray and ask God, there are only three answers He gives: “Yes”, “No”, and “Wait”. More often than not, we don’t like the latter two. But God doesn’t always give us what we want. He knows what is best for us. He knows His purposes for us. And sometimes, we complain and lose patience with God when we want something from Him really bad – especially when we thought we heard a ‘Yes’.
A man who was very Patient with God
Let’s look at the life of Abraham. His was a life of huge promises. God told Abraham that he was to become the father of many nations – how was that gonna happen when he didn’t have a single heir? Neither son nor daughter was born to Abraham because his wife.
Friday, September 30, 2011
How you can become Patient with the things you're Praying for
Friday, September 23, 2011
Make your Friends dictate your Search Results with Wajam Social Search
Social is becoming more and more powerful in the internet. You can now search through the power of social connections. Word of mouth is still the most powerful way to influence decision making. Wajam makes searching the web through your friend’s word of mouth as a medium, possible.
I’m not going to make this a full review. I’ll just be including what I generally think about Wajam’s tool – purpose, advantages and disadvantages.
Upside: A Great use of Social Data – instead of you asking them for a decision (to buy or to subscribe, etc.), their opinions are readily available
There are so many things that the internet can do with your social data. Wajam is a company that is wise enough to know that they can use your social data for your own informational and/or decision-making benefit. If you have the Wajam tool installed in your browser, you are now able to see your friend’s sharing of information in your Google, Yahoo or Bing SERP (and much more as you can see in the picture below).
You know your friends and they know their stuff
Friends are people you know in real life. These are people whom you have some extent of relationship with – consequently, these are people you have given some extent of your trust. What they say or think has credibility to you and could affect the way you think.
Sometimes you want to ask people what they think about something. You don’t know which friend you would ask because you really don’t know who of your friends know about that ‘thing’ you want to ask about. Well, Wajam checks that out for you as you type in your keywords in the search bar of any search engine.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Unexplainable and the Undeniable
In one of our dgroup sessions, my discipler pointed out the value of one’s testimony. I remember him saying these words: “Testimonies are not only unexplainable, they are also undeniable.”
Author’s Note: I was browsing through my old journal and found some verses that had a “write an article” note on them, but I have somehow forgotten. This is one of them.
The transformed life of the Christian must be characterized as such. At some point we find people who will challenge what we believe, pitting it against their own belief system in a philosophical debate. Whatever the motive, we will often be pushed against the wall; demanded for an explanation for the faith that we confess – that God exists, and that He is good, is a truth that remains unacceptable, even repulsive, to most modern minds.
I’ve read one comment by an atheist in a Christian blog site entry recently. He pointed out in his comment that the God of the bible is nothing more than a fantasy. His contention was anchored at the notion that the bible was written by man, and for one to believe in a God that is found in the pages of a man-made book would imply that he, too, could become god if he writes a book claiming that he is.
He then continues his point by stating that he’d rather believe that which is logical or that which can be proven by empirical evidence rather than something he considers a flight of human imagination. On a separate occasion, I’ve also heard another story of a person who tried to prove the non-existence of God through an experiment – praying the same prayer to God and to a toy dinosaur, and evaluating the results – concluding that the toy dinosaur answered more of his prayers than God, implying that there is no God.
Though we can engage in endless philosophical discussions against such views, we would only find ourselves enraging their proponents by taking an adversarial stance – attacking their philosophy and declaring them wrong in their thinking. I personally believe that living a life pleasing to God is more effective than any theological argument. In one of his messages, I’ve heard Ravi Zacharias say, “The Christian life is the greatest apologetic.” I believe he is right. Those who do not know the God of the bible or refuse to accept that He exists are compelled to explain something inexplicable presented before them.
Competition Backlinks Link Prospecting Technique
There are lots of ways to spy out a competitor’s moves in the internet marketing world. All websites are public. All websites are visible. Therefore all public activities of a website can be studied. One of those things are the backlinks of any website. And since you and your competitors are on the same playing field, why not try a little competition backlink trolling?
Getting a Sneak Peak
Of course, your competitors are competitors for a reason – you both have the same target market, the same niche, the same kind of business, perhaps even the same product. Knowing that, you can either lag behind your competition – or you can lead it. But let’s face it, there’s always something you’re competitors have that you don’t and vice versa. There are links that you have that he doesn’t have and vice versa.
Isn’t it easier to just get your link prospects from good ones in your competition’s backlinks?
Yahoo Site Explorer
Free is always good. Yahoo Site Explorer is shutting down on 2012 – but as of now it’s one of the most powerful, comprehensive free backlink explorer tool that’s easily available. You only need to put in the desired site URL in the text area and the tool will automatically feed you with all the backlinks that the specific webpage/website has.
From there, you can follow the backlinks to check if it really is a good website to get a link from. It has its own limitations though – Yahoo Site Explorer can only check out up to 1,000 results. But I’m sure you’ll already be smothered up with a handful of prospects with that list alone.
Friday, September 16, 2011
How Google plans to Control Black Hat Spam of Google Plus One Button
The Google Plus One button has been the late craze of both the SEO world and the social network marketers. It works wonders! It shares content and it increases your rankings in the search engines according to the quantity (and perhaps, quality) of the +1 of a webpage. Now that we have that established as a fact, a lot of black hatters would naturally come into play. How would Google control the spamming of the Google +1 button?
Lots of people are taking advantage
Warrior forums is even selling +1's like pancakes.
Why not sell a Google +1 service when it works? And that’s just what’s happening right now as many people try to abuse the ability of the +1 button to increase search engine rankings.
Quality as an indicator
One of the ways that Google claims to clean this up is by looking into the quality of +1′s by the relevance of the user who +1′d a page into all his other +1′s – kinda like Facebook’s Like button. The history of a user’s +1 tells a lot about the preferences and (for a lack of a better word) ‘likes’ of that certain user.
Google can see spam activities either by the rate of +1 a user is giving (and the quality of those +1′s) and by the rate a website is getting +1′s. Google can also make the +1 of all the other people in the Circles of that certain user as an indicator of the quality of that user’s +1. Relevance will set the tone for quality – and quality can set the tone for spam indication.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
3 Huge Benefits of having a Blog
As a designer you must treasure three things at most: Credibility, Clients and Cash.
While a lot of methods can be done to help boost these factors such as Media Advertisements, Online Portfolio, Attending Social Gatherings, one of the most effective and inexpensive proven way is to create a blog. Creating a blog not only is efficient in providing you more exposure to a broad range of client by means of the internet, it is also cost-effective since the cost that you are going to pay is more or less $35/year. If done right, you can be getting about at the very least, 100 possible prospects a day. That’s a pretty cheap deal for $35 a year don’t you think?
It is actually perplexing as to why a lot of freelance designers choose to overlook this opportunity as it can offer so much. While your portfolios present your works in a very impressive light, what good is it if you are never found? Let’s face it, sometimes companies don’t go for word of mouth, instead they go to Google to find a good designer.
You may have just lost one of your best clients because of lack in internet presence.
Given some of the ideas that I have pointed out, if you are still not convinced I’ll give another three points in detail on why making a blog for career will be a win-win action for you:
1: Instant Marketing and Publicity
When you create a blog post, you make sure you write something about you and/or your work. After all, its focus is to showcase you: who you are, what you are, and how you are as a designer. Your work should be visible, from the design of your blog, to images in your content. Almost everything should speak YOU.
Now as people read, they learn about your work, your life and/or your interest (depending on your chosen theme). You are on-air as long as your website is up. For about 10 to 30 minutes a day depending on how much effort you place, you are to impart something different to your readers, it might be knowledge or entertainment but as long as they get something, they finish your article with you leaving a mark in them at that moment. And that’s what’s important, ’cause when you do, you just got yourself a tribe.
Every person is sure to have friends, sure to have online social networks and social circles to boot. Use this to your advantage. It is highly recommended that you place certain plugins that instantly inserts network sharing in all your posts as it can do a lot of exponential advertisement to your blog if shared. As an example, my twitter followers amount to about 100, while in Facebook I have 570 friends. Now imagine if I share one of your articles through twitter, you have more or less around 100 prospects already which, in turn, may re-share again and give you another number of prospects.
Think about it this way, while in a static portfolio, you work hard in making collaterals, promoting yourself and socializing in an exerted effort trying your best to share your works.
In a blog, people share it for you.
Three Dangerous Mindsets from the Devil
There are three dangerous mindsets that the Devil uses to break us down to compromise. These mindsets are an acid to our judgment and ultimately, it can destroy anyone who unconsciously embraces it. So now, I am bringing these mindsets to consciousness to warn you.
This entry has been inspired by the message of pastor Harold J. Sala in CCF Alabang regarding family
1st mindset: Satan will tell you that God’s standards are too high
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” - Genesis 3:1
Satan will tell you that you are not capable of living up to God’s standards. He will tell you it’s impossible therefore you have to be what you are – human. And when you make a mistake he’ll tell you to tell yourself that.Isn’t that why we always say ‘I’m only human’ whenever we fail to reach expectations?
For the world, God’s standards will always be too high. That is because He is God and He is perfect. We are marred by sin and imperfection, but the Holy Spirit enables us to be more than just who we are. We are called to be more than humans.
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” – 1 John 3:1-2
We are called to be children of God. And as His children, we are called to be like Him – in His rulership, in His character, in His love. Just as children imitate their father or mother, so we are called to imitate God. This is who we are. This is what we were meant to be by God. Not to ‘be human’ as the world imprints on you to be.
2nd mindset: Satan will tell you ‘One time won’t matter. One time can’t hurt.’
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” - Genesis 3:6-7
Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Once. Just once. And when it happened, God didn’t tell them ‘Oh maybe you didn’t hear what I said…’ and gave them another chance.
“So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” - Genesis 3:23-24
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Keep Walking
Last weekend I was blessed to be part of a retreat that pushed through despite the bad weather. Retreats are always refreshing. At the very least, they provide a momentary, tranquil escape to the otherwise busy state of the city – away from all the hassles of the daily life we live and complicate. They also pull us aside and give us time to reflect on matters we normally shrug off and discount as irrelevant or least priority. Most importantly, retreats give us the serene opportunity to approach God and be intimate with Him – devoid of all pretenses, open to hearing the Gospel and invite Jesus to reign in our heats as Lord and Savior.
Author’s Note: This is inspired by the recent Singles@Work retreat. =)
For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. – 2 Peter 1:5-7
I have heard the Gospel being shared many times over the past years since I have come to know and accepted Christ, but the impact it creates amazes me to this day. To the one who claims that God’s Word is alive and powerful, he has evidence to prove it – the lives being transformed by those who receive it. A full understanding of the good news brings forth not only a sense of unexplainable peace and joy, but a longing to know Jesus even more.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Why Google+ Wants You to Get Social
It seems the past few weeks have been abuzz with talk all about that new Google+ thing … what it is, how to use it, and why it will eventually kill Facebook.
Instead of adding to that chatter, I wonder if we might be able to discuss a few other topics.
What will change in terms of the search experience, search engine optimization, and the fight on social spam.
The User Experience of Search
As the web becomes more and more populated with content, the harder search engines need to work to discover what should be prominently positioned. By working harder, I mean including more signals, looking to other sources for insight, and slashing sources that fall short of dependability.
In addition, when the web became a much more social environment, search engines took notice and wanted in. They created Social Search early 2010, which featured content from various networks, including Twitter, but Facebook shut Google out at some point — probably because they heard Google was working on a little project themselves.
So in addition to providing content from the social web to users searching Google for content, Google also wanted to use the information they found to rank pages with better insight. Instead of looking for keywords and meta, Google could use the social information they found, including what’ was being shared and voted up or re-tweeted, and factor it into their algorithm and make a more informed discussion regarding whether or not the page was relevant and worthy of prominent search results.
